Labyrinth
by NightClan
Summary: NightClan RPG's first co-written story. When a mysterious prophecy is unleashed on the forest, what lengths will StarClan go to protect their descendants? And what lengths will NightClan go to get their revenge? Rated K , but the rating may change as the plot progresses.
1. Allegiances

**A.N: **These will be updated as the story progresses and more characters are introduced.

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**ALLEGIANCES**

**STARCLAN**

**Leaders:**

**Shadowstar-** sleek, broad-shouldered black she-cat with ivy-green eyes. Founder of ShadowClan,

**Riverstar- **large grey tom with green eyes. Founder of RiverClan.

**Windstar- **wiry, pale brown she-cat with yellow eyes. Founder of WindClan.

**Thunderstar- **ginger tabby tom with white paws and amber eyes. Founder of ThunderClan.

**Medicine Cats:**

**Whitefur- **tall, lanky white tom with dark blue eyes and grey tabby markings. Formerly of ThunderClan.

**Warriors:**

**Aspentail- **black she-cat with grey streaks, blue eyes, and an unusually long tail. Formerly of RiverClan.

**Apprentices:**

**Bristlepaw- **ginger and brown tabby she-cat with amber eyes and a faded pelt. Formerly of RiverClan, killed in a battle for Sunningrocks one hundred years before the story begins.


	2. Prologue - Brindlestar

**A.N: **This, my friends, is what happens when I write at 1 AM. No regrets! Anyway, welcome to _Labyrinth, _NightClan RPG's first co-written story. Each chapter will be penned by a different member of the forum, so no two sections in a row will be written by the same author. I hope you enjoy the story, and feedback is greatly appreciated!

**Writer: **Sierra of the Stars – Brindlestar

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**Prologue**

**-Bristlepaw-**

The dawn cascaded over the horizon like a river on the rocks, clouds spraying like foam across the gradient blues and bronzes of the sky. Beneath them, Bristlepaw struggled to keep her shoulders from jabbing her in the ears as she lowered herself gingerly into a hunter's crouch. _One step, two steps, three. Four steps, five steps, six and-_ A faint rustling in the bracken betrayed the presence of another.

"You shall not catch me, insidious ThunderClan scum!" the apprentice cried shrilly, whirling to face her stalker. The arching fronds whipped her across the nose, as if in reprimand. Bristlepaw swiped a semi-opaque paw over the stinging area and continued to peer vehemently into the brush, scouring the shadowy growth for potential enemies. "Reveal yourself, foul foe." A second crinkling noise tugged her attention in the opposite direction as the ghostly mouse she had been pursuing skittered out of sight, the dim stars in its fur flickering feebly in the waxing light. "Excrement of foxes," Bristlepaw fumed. Her dark mood was only enhanced by the realization that her own clumsy tail had stirred the bracken moments earlier.

"Bristlepaw." She flinched. Whitefur's faded pelt glimmered before her, the former medicine cat's stern blue eyes narrowed condescendingly. He must have slipped out of the ferns while Bristlepaw snarled at prey-animals. Searing heat rose to the apprentice's face, and she felt the tips of her pale ears reddening with humiliation. "We have no enemies in StarClan. Old Clan rivalries have no substance here. Don't you know that by now? After all, it's only been a hundred season-cycles since you joined us, according to Riverstar," said the tom, his smooth voice tinted with sarcasm.

"I plead your forgiveness, good medic," Bristlepaw mewed, pressing herself to the ground in a deferential kowtow. "I meant no offense to any of my ThunderClan brethren."

"It's your tail you should be apologizing to. Such language." It took several heartbeats for the she-cat to register the suppressed amusement in Whitefur's dignified gaze.

"Shall I… Shall I apologize to it, master?"

A resounding chortle tore its way from Whitefur's throat. Bristlepaw giggled hesitantly as the medicine cat threw back his head in a breathless keen of laughter. "You're too much, little one," he said, when at last his deep guffaws came to a panting end. "Now, in all seriousness, I have been ordered by Riverstar himself to escort you to the Vault of Prophecies, a mission of great esteem and imperative secrecy."

The former RiverClan apprentice's studiously downcast eyes faltered, flickering upward to stare at Whitefur with mingled awe and apprehension. "You have spoken to Riverstar?" Bristlepaw breathed. Her paws scarcely seemed to touch the earth.

"Yes," said Whitefur, "and he says that you had better stop filching Aspentail's morning meals or he'll claw off your fur, roll it in herbs, and feed it to the ThunderClan kits."

"I plead your forgiveness-"

"For Lions' sake, Bristlepaw!" The medicine cat rolled his eyes emphatically, pivoted, and sauntered into the white glower of the rising sun. Bristlepaw blinked as it flashed around his retreating form, leaving her half-blind and unsure of which way was up. Whitefur's commanding bellow rolled like a thunderclap from somewhere in the luster ahead, and she scrambled gawkily after it, her feet skidding judderingly, uncontrollably, on the dew-slick undergrowth. The brilliant morning splashed over her, cool and damp and full of the tantalizing scents of rushing water and abundant prey. Bristlepaw let herself drown in the painfully beautiful light. _One step, two steps, three. Four steps, five steps, six. Seven steps, eight steps, nine. Ten steps…_

Her count lapsed into daydreams, and her whiskers twitched in delight as she fantasized of plump, wriggling trout and the wind in the rushes of her old Clan. Since her… since she first set foot in StarClan, thoughts of the world below had haunted her every step. She knew better than to dwell on the endless taunting of "what-ifs" that dogged her, pointless nostalgia for the life that could have been if only she had not leapt rashly into a battle she wasn't trained for. Nostalgia was not the sort of thing for an apprentice to concern herself with, after all. Even if she was over a thousand moons old. There were plenty of fish in the whispering creeks of the afterlife. Sometimes it seemed they were born purely out of the hunters' lust for them, so perfectly timed were their leaps. But it wasn't the same. It would never be the same.

"We approach the Vault." The tender touch of Whitefur's plumy tail on her shoulder brought Bristlepaw to a halt, and she jerked out of her musings with a muffled squeak of surprise. Although by her vague reckoning it should have been a time yet before sunhigh, the two cats stood, silent and statuesque, beneath a dome as black and glossy as a crow's sleek head. Stars blossomed like strange silver flowers above, opening and closing ethereal petals to a rhythm Bristlepaw couldn't hear. The quiet here seemed ancient, choreographed by some bigger force than StarClan. Older than the forest itself, and yet untainted by dust or tarnish. Timeless.

"I believed that already we were among the stars," she said quietly, oddly leery of breaking the silence. "But I see now that I have been deceived."

"Not deceived, no," meowed Whitefur. "Those that you see above are something greater than our stars. The High Stars we call them, from which all things come. Even the oldest cat in StarClan can't claim to understand what they are exactly, but we interpret their messages into prophecies of the futures of the Clans. Sometimes of things before the Clans, or things that won't be until long after our world is gone." There was no amusement in his rumbling tone, only a respect of unfathomable vastness and sincerity.

"Why have you taken me here? I am but a graceless apprentice. I do not belong in sacred places and- and below High Stars."

"I brought you here because Riverstar instructed me to. I don't know his reasoning, but I think you're old enough to learn the secrets of StarClan, even if you don't look it. Even if you don't feel it." The medicine cat paused, his tufted ears twitching uncomfortably. "You have a part to play yet, Bristlepaw. For better or for worse, you're not quite finished."

He flicked his feathery tail tip to the right, where a darkness that seemed, impossibly, to be blacker, more impenetrable, than that around it, yawned like the gaping maw of some immense mythical beast. "There is the Vault of Prophecies, where all the words that we have gleaned from the High Stars are gathered, waiting to be made true prophecies and dictate the course of history. As you can imagine it's, ah, a very important place. I'd advise you to tread carefully, Bristlepaw."

"Will you not accompany me, master?" Bristlepaw asked, a shudder rippling up her spine at the thought of being left alone in that yawning void.

"I don't have permission to enter. I will wait right here for you to emerge, I promise." In an unexpected display of sympathy, Whitefur dipped his regal head and rasped his tongue between the apprentice's ears. "Go." Shivering again as embarrassed warmth tingled in her limbs, Bristlepaw steeled herself for the plunge into shadow and entered the Vault of Prophecies.

An algid gust of wind tore through her starry fur, slicing past the carefully erected defenses in her mind and exposing all her buried doubts and innermost fears, her regrets and her joys, her bloodiest memories and her fiercely elated ones, the constant wondering why she of all the valiant cats in her generation had not yet faded into oblivion when all others were long forgotten. The small tabby gasped as her lungs contracted and an icy numbness overwhelmed the heat of Whitefur's affection. Her pelt crackled with frost. Then, just as suddenly as it had seized her, the scouring presence retreated and Bristlepaw was left, sputtering and naked inside, in the lightlessness of the Vault. She felt both liberated and wounded by the brutal revelation, scrubbed raw until she bled and healed all at once.

Slowly the apprentice became aware of soft, welcoming lights winking into existence in the twilight. They did not speak to her, exactly, at least not in the way that she knew speech, but a cordial energy coursed through her, greeting her by name. Bristlepaw's lips quirked up in the phantom of a smile. She had never imagined that such things could be, not even in StarClan. So wonderful and so terrible together. She fumbled in the murk, picking her way meanderingly towards the nearest of the bobbing lights. It pulsed more brightly at her approach, as if encouraging her, its golden rays fluctuating in mimicry of the High Stars. On an impulse, Bristlepaw thrust her nose into the steady radiance. Immediately, a grating voice reverberated through her mind, bringing with it traces of rotting leaves and moldering wood.

_The Greenleaf will be harsh this season-cycle._

The light throbbed once more, wavered, and was extinguished, and a sense of wrongness rose on her tongue like bile. The amiable murmurings fell silent. Desperate for the friendly energies to return, Bristlepaw scampered towards a second orb, this one a rich copper in color. Again, she touched her nose to the unearthly beacon, and again words- real words spoken by a real cat- echoed in her ears. The speaker sounded younger this time, with a lilting, singsong accent and words that bled together. She smelled of rosemary.

_From ashes cold and embers dim  
The Eagle's Bane will rise again  
And upon the mount the savior smite  
The ruin of the solstice-night_

Visions flashed before her, jarring against the reassuring gleam of the sphere, like memories of old nightmares. A rocky moor, WindClan maybe, drenched with crimson blood and littered with thin, mangled bodies. A wall of fire bearing down on a huddled clump of warriors and swallowing them up in a billow of ash and flame. A bedraggled she-cat nimbly alighting on a craggy boulder, her shoulders hunched like the wings of a great carrion bird and her eyes gleaming cruelly in the dusk. A sky sprinkled with stars, spiderwebbed with hairline cracks. The heavens shattering with a sound like breaking ice, raining dark slivers down on the land below. Darkness, a horribly physical darkness that sluiced through her like a river of snowmelt.

Bristlepaw staggered as the light was quenched, her eyes widening in horror. "Whitefur?" she shrieked, searching frantically for the archway she had passed through to enter the Vault. "Whitefur, where are you? Master!"

_"You have a part to play yet, Bristlepaw. For better or for worse, you're not quite finished."_ What had she done?

Her lids fluttered open. She was sprawled on the smooth alabaster stone beneath the High Stars, her limbs splayed awkwardly beneath her and her jaws parted in a terrified yowl. Whitefur loomed over her, his handsome face contorted in fatherly concern and his blue eyes sparking with emotion- worry? relief? shame? fury? Bristlepaw couldn't tell.

"I plead your forgiveness, good medic!" For once, he didn't laugh. "I knew not what I was doing. There were lights, lovely lights, and they sang to me. Then they stopped, and I was selfish and wished for more, and so I touched them, and there was a prophecy," she gushed. "I heard a prophecy. Two, perhaps. And there was a war, and fire, and the sky was broken and plunged down upon the forest and-"

"Enough," Whitefur mewed. His gaze was hard as twin sapphires, but he trembled from whiskers to tail. Bristlepaw curled herself into a ball of striped auburn fur, as though shielding herself from a hefty blow. She whimpered as the lanky tom raised an ashen forepaw, but he only laid it lightly on her flank. "There are some things we can't control, that we can't even begin to comprehend. I don't want to know what you saw in the Vault, and frankly it's none of my concern. Whatever fate you have unleashed on the Clans they will have to weather, at all costs. All StarClan can do now is watch and pray and try to assist our living kin in any way we can. That is all that StarClan is supposed to do. Do you hear me, Bristlepaw?"

"I hear you," she said weakly.

"Good. Very few cats have ever seen what you've been shown today. That must count for something, right? No matter what happens from here on, never believe that any of this was your fault. Swear that to me, at least."

"I swear it upon the High Stars, master."

Whitefur nudged the RiverClan she-cat to her paws and gave another comforting lick on her forehead. "Let's go home."

_"You have a part to play." _Despite her oath to Whitefur, she couldn't stifle the wave of remorse crashing over her, pinning her down, choking her every breath. Was this her role, the harbinger of doom and despair for the forest? Was this what the High Stars meant for her to do? Tentatively, the mismatched pair ventured back into the light of StarClan, where the wind was in the rushes, the trout were plump and wriggling, and the dawn was tumbling down with the rivers. _One steps, two steps, three…_

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In the blubbery murk of a glade where no stars shone, a mottled black she-cat smiled disconcertingly, her eyes like live coals above her angular cheekbones, her elegant muzzle grizzled with silver. "NightClan's time has come."


End file.
